Weather in the Planetary Editor

Yes, there was another thread titled this, but it burned out pretty quickly because of a discussion on how chemistry works.

If we want to populate biomes properly, we're going to have to model weather to some extent. Now this does not mean that we'll be able to forecast weather in your environment or tell you that it will snow four centimeters on Thursday. However, we should have weather and weather systems Therefore, we need to know how weather works on Earth. There are things we need to be able to model. These are, most importantly:-Tides-Temperature-Wind

These pretty much define how weather behaves on your planet. If you check out the PCM thread, I've been doing work on how to model a planet's base climate, from the ground up. (I've gotten far enough that, given a mass for a main sequence star, I can predict where an earth-like planet will be and approximate the light intensity at any point on that planet at noon.) That determines the macroclimate of the planet, but not smaller weather systems. I want to be able to model weather to a certain point: the level of depth would be equivalent to a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico causing thunderstorms in southern Canada. This basically is just modeling large wind patterns, which should not be too difficult.

I need people to help me with this. You don't need to do maths, you just need to do research. I am more than happy to write mathematical models. Information that I need at the moment will be posted here.

Weather and climate, again, are essential to biome population. Biome placement is defined by climate and resources.

First things first I suppose. Are we putting biomes into places with appropriate weather, or will weather become appropriate based on biomes?

Both. Life and the climate continuously influence each other, but biomes are going to follow rules of relative climate, and then the climate inside the biomes will be determined by the biome itself. We know where a rain forest could go, but the only way it will get lots of rain is if we actually put a rain forest there. Does that make sense?

First things first I suppose. Are we putting biomes into places with appropriate weather, or will weather become appropriate based on biomes?

Both. Life and the climate continuously influence each other, but biomes are going to follow rules of relative climate, and then the climate inside the biomes will be determined by the biome itself. We know where a rain forest could go, but the only way it will get lots of rain is if we actually put a rain forest there. Does that make sense?

Yes, but it doesn't help.

We need to know how planets will be populated with biomes before we can talk weather. This game can't be perfectly realistic, and I'm sure no one will rage quit if our weather systems aren't perfect. If we're going to scientifically slack on anything, this is the place to do it.

First things first I suppose. Are we putting biomes into places with appropriate weather, or will weather become appropriate based on biomes?

Both. Life and the climate continuously influence each other, but biomes are going to follow rules of relative climate, and then the climate inside the biomes will be determined by the biome itself. We know where a rain forest could go, but the only way it will get lots of rain is if we actually put a rain forest there. Does that make sense?

Yes, but it doesn't help.

We need to know how planets will be populated with biomes before we can talk weather. This game can't be perfectly realistic, and I'm sure no one will rage quit if our weather systems aren't perfect. If we're going to scientifically slack on anything, this is the place to do it.

My thoughts exactly. Really i just want to establish a hierarchy:Planetary climate>local climate>biomes>weather Does that help a little more?

I know about as much as the other girl when it comes to meteorology, but if planets are populated with biomes first, and weather second, we can at least work off of a stagnant weather system as opposed to a dynamic one.

Next off, how alien will our worlds get? What kinds of tilts and axis (plural please?) of rotation can we expect to see?

I know about as much as the other girl when it comes to meteorology, but if planets are populated with biomes first, and weather second, we can at least work off of a stagnant weather system as opposed to a dynamic one.

Next off, how alien will our worlds get? What kinds of tilts and axis (plural please?) of rotation can we expect to see?

If I'm the other girl, then you probably know more about weather than me, Tenebrarum.

Right. So, just to check, this will water my rainforests and not my deserts, right? Sweet. We need a list of non-precipitation weather factors that will change conditions in a biome rather than changing the biome itself. This means that I am reduced to one type of desert overall. You could have biomes for christmas if this works.

in-play weather could be generated randomly, right? Say, for each amount of play time, there is a some number % chance that it will rain, or snow, whatever, depending on the precipitation value of that biome. Chances of snow, hail, and high winds would also be a %, so if we just had a random generator come up with a number between 1 and 100, at or below the percent would have that weather happen.

I like this idea already.

_________________Environmental, Chemical and Linguistic Specialist. If you speak or write any language that isn't English, we want you.Now accepting biome donations here.

As of right now, I can't find any solid information on what degree of a tilt is necessary for what. We can predict, but we've established that the moon is pretty integral for us and then we keep hitting the tree body problem.

I think what we should do first is figure out what will be necessary for stable tilt, preferably being generous enough that we can have stable biomes on moons as well as planets. Then we need to decide if we want to go through the work of writing an equation to give us an accurate seasonal count, or just set down a few different arbitrary degrees of tilt and seasonal severity. We may have to write or rewrite a few biomes.

Now, in regards to the actual weather itself, I cast my vote in favor of populating the planet with biomes first, then adding weather based on that. In a perfect world, we'd have the biomes be dynamic and react to impossible weather patterns, but we may have to settle for statics ones.

As of right now, I can't find any solid information on what degree of a tilt is necessary for what. We can predict, but we've established that the moon is pretty integral for us and then we keep hitting the tree body problem.

I think what we should do first is figure out what will be necessary for stable tilt, preferably being generous enough that we can have stable biomes on moons as well as planets. Then we need to decide if we want to go through the work of writing an equation to give us an accurate seasonal count, or just set down a few different arbitrary degrees of tilt and seasonal severity. We may have to write or rewrite a few biomes.

Now, in regards to the actual weather itself, I cast my vote in favor of populating the planet with biomes first, then adding weather based on that. In a perfect world, we'd have the biomes be dynamic and react to impossible weather patterns, but we may have to settle for statics ones.

With my maths we can predict seasonal variance in light intensity, giving us energy availability for different seasons, which determines what plants need to be able to survive to live there. For different biomes, we'll just have different seasonal curves (basically, if the minimum and maximum lie in x range, then the biome has an x season value. We'll have maybe 20 different season values). Remember that a biome is defined by location, terrain, water and succession.